


Chaos

by palimpsestus



Series: Chaos [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And in her head it is chaos"</p>
<p>The aftermath of Shepard's choice on the Citadel at the end of Mass Effect 3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choice

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in the Mass Effect kink meme on LJ, and I enjoyed writing it and its sequels so much I decided I should probably collate it on Ao3.

It hurt. It hurt more than returning from the dead. It hurt more than dying. It hurt more than knowing that blast must have killed him because damn it, she knew by now she wasn’t that lucky.   
  
It hurt so much.   
  
Daddy! The grass was tall and she couldn’t see him, his head bobbing above the blades of green. Daddy, where are you? He wouldn’t leave her when the brotos were in rutting season, and her knee hurt where she had fallen, blood seeping onto Mindoir’s earth.  
  
For hours she lay there, pressed into the crevice of rock, listening to the screams of Mindoir’s people. She remembered lying in the field, hearing the brotos scream, and waiting for her father.   
  
For hours she ran from them, picking them off one by one, every biotic trick she’d ever learned, every memory of every guerrilla tactic dredged from her soul. And every civilian she met she begged, bullied, entreated and promised they’d live if they only joined her.   
  
 _I have lived a life in fear._  
  
“Shepard! Commander!”  
  
 _Oh God, no, please no._  The pain came back, a solid wall slamming into her with the force of a brute. “I . . .” the weight of her own body felt too much. There was something very wrong inside her, broken, in the wrong place. That was pain beyond measure. “What do you need me to do?” she grunted.  _You won’t let me go till I’ve died for you, for your sins, will you?_  
  
Hackett’s voice echoed in her head, the effect of a burst ear drum, she recognised that distinct agony from a mission early in her N7 days. It would be a painful fix, she remembered that too.   
  
“Nothing’s happening, the Crucible’s not firing.”  
  
He was desperate, she realised. She remembered his greeting after Elysium, the surprise on his face when he met this soldier who had done so well, she had never forgotten that. It had almost said ‘you? But you’re nothing, you’re not the strongest, or the fastest, you’re just an orphaned batarian hating girl from Mindoir’.  
  
He had never said it, had always been so supportive, but part of her had always wondered why he hadn’t had another candidate in mind. Doe, the so-called Butcher of Torfan, he would have been a prime Spectre candidate, surely? Was Doe dead now?   
  
Was she?  
  
The panel was too far above her. There was an unnerving softness to her body, as though it was collapsing in on itself.  
  
She remembered sucking in gasps of space, a vacuum where her lungs should be, the -  
  
“It’s gotta be something on your end. Commander Shepard!”  
  
 ~~That’s not right – he has always supported you.~~  
  
No he never supported you – wants you to give it all away.  
  
“I don’t see anything,” she couldn’t raise her arm. “I’m not sure how to - ”  
  
The last gulp of nothing before the blackness descended. The final scream of a shuttle tearing off with her family inside. The knowledge that she couldn't win on Elysium. Thessia destroyed, Palaven burning above her head, her finger over the trigger and Kaidan’s face in the cross hairs, she could just be a VI . . .  
  
So much pain.   
  
Daddy where are you? Why had he left her that day in the grass? When she was so small.  
  
She was small now. Tiny. In a galaxy too vast to be real. 

 

 

****  
  
“Wake up.”  
  
Yes. She opened her eyes, the pain at bay, or muted underwater. Her broken ear drum made everything muffled and for once she felt . . . warm. “What.”  _What do you want from me now?_ “Where am I?”  
  
“The Citadel.” It was the boy. The boy who burned. He stared at her with eyes that didn’t exist – _ ~~and this is wrong!~~_  – and he watched her. “It’s my home.”  
  
 _ ~~THIS IS WRONG.~~_  She screwed up her eyes, wondering why that didn’t hurt, hadn’t she broken her cheek? “Who are you?”  
  
“I am the Catalyst.” Yes, it was the catalyst, the end, where there would be peace and she could sleep. _Let me sleep._  
  
This was like drowning in space again. She half shook her head, willing this to make sense. “I thought the Citadel was the Catalyst.”  
  
“No, the Citadel is part of me.”   
  
It was warm. She remembered now, he heard her crying, heard her sobs over the howl of the brotos, and he came towards her, a towering shadow blocking out the sun, reaching down to lift her into the sky.

  


Shadows that block out the sun. That was important. She could see Earth now, filling the sky, not Mindoir’s fluffy clouds. “I need to stop the Reapers, do you know how I can do that?”  
  
“Perhaps.” The boy was frightened, or angry, or simply accusing her. She remembered how he wouldn’t crawl towards her in that vent, you can’t save me, he’d said. Why was the Catalyst like him? Why . . . the boy burned in her dream. Here, in front of her, he was only smoke.  
  
“I control the reapers. They are my solution.”  
  
 _Only smoke. Only ~~memory~~._  
  
“The solution to what?” Because there had to be a solution. She couldn’t have got this far without one, she couldn’t have come here for a panel she couldn’t reach.   
  
“Chaos.”  
  
-CHAOS. HE KISSES YOU AND YOU FEEL ALIVE, THE SMILE YOU ONCE HAD TO FIGHT TO WIN COMES SO EASILY NOW, HE ROLLS YOU ON THE MATTRESS, YOU TANGLE TOGETHER IN THE SHEETS AND THERE IS SO MUCH LAUGHTER, SO MUCH -  
  
“The created will always rebel against their creators. But we found a way to stop that from happening. To restore order for the next cycle.”  
  
Her father lifted her into the sky and held her in his arms as he brought her back home. Safe. Warm. Peace. Stillness. No fight left. Those were good memories.   
  
She groaned, her head was fuzzy. “By wiping out organic life,” she murmured, the words coming to her, borne on instincts she didn’t realise she still had. She had to stop walking, it hurt too much.  
  
“No. We harvest advanced civilisations leaving the younger ones alone. Just as we left your people alive the last time we were here.”   
  
 _You wouldn’t have, if you’d known what we became, what the Protheans left for us_  – but it was so warm, in her father’s arms, where she had been safe and sound.–CHAOS. HE KISSES YOU AND IT IS-  
  
“But you killed the rest,” she said. At least when she was speaking, her head wasn’t thumping.  
  
The boy looked at her, almost pityingly. “We helped them ascend so they could make way for new life, storing the old life in Reaper form.”  
  
Yes, she’d seen that –FEAR YOU FELT THEN THAT FEAR SHOULD BE- she could see a Reaper sailing overhead. To be held in that metal prison, unwilling, unthoughtful . . . “I think we’d rather keep our own form,” she said. The words felt like steel in her blood.  
  
“No, you can’t.”   
  
When the boy who burned spoke, she could hear the soft throb of a cello, strings strumming with the beat of her heart. The steel faded, left her soft and small, and she was so tired. She had promised to come back but . . . that wasn’t happening now. So many fights, so many times she thought she was down forever. When Saren had seized her by the throat. And she had talked him into shooting himself.  
  
Talked the Illusive Man into shooting himself.  
  
-CAPED THEY ESCAPED THAT WAS THE ONLY WAY THEY COULD E-  
  
“Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics.” The boy who burned was regarding her carefully. She had wanted to save him so badly. Remembered how he had ran to that woman in her dream, the woman who was like her, but at peace, who burned and didn’t care. She wanted to not care. She wanted to not fear the pain. “We’ve created the cycle so it never happens. That is the solution.”  
  
 _You’ve given these people hope.  
I’m glad I inspire that in you but . . ._  
  
It hurt. Oh everything hurt. The light was stabbed in her eyes, her blood was fire on her skin, the roar of her tattered eardrum almost drowned out the howl of her insides. Her fingers tightened on the grip of the gun. “But you are taking away our future,” she grated out, realising for the first time she had fractured the teeth on the left side of her face. A fragment of enamel pricked her tongue. A tiny stab of pain in the torrent. “Without future, we have no hope. Without hope we might as well be machines, programmed to do what we are told.”  
  
“You have hope,” and the boy who burned turned from her, as if troubled. Or amused. Why couldn’t she read him? She was sinking back underwater, where the pain was less. “More than you think. The fact that you are standing here, the first organic ever, proves it.”  
  
She stared up at the stars and the burning planet. Everything burned. And burning was bad. Burning was very bad.   
  
“But it also proves my solution won’t work anymore.”

 

“So now what?” she panted.   
  
“We find a new solution.”   
  
Because her father had found in that rock crevice after all, pulled her out, cradled her tiny body and took her away.  
  
-NO HE DIED-  
  
Her mother found her on Elysium  
  
-DIED SHE-  
  
There was always another solution. Always a way out. _Always_  . . . she blinked. “Yeah, but how?” _Because I can’t even reach the panel, what more do you want from me? Can’t I sleep?_  
  
“The crucible changed me, created new possibilities, but I can’t make them happen. I know you’ve thought about destroying us.”  
  
Her mind filled with Anderson, with the rage he had felt, the fury, the hurt that she hadn’t come to save him, the guilt that he thought he had picked the wrong woman for the job.   
  
She almost recoiled as the boy continued. “You can wipe out all synthetic life if you want, including the geth.”  
  
All? Even EDI? All gone? No. Her core rebelled. She was a protector. A guardian. She would never destroy, she was a protector, a guardian, never destroy, protect, guard, never destroy.  
  
“Even you are partly synthetic,” the boy said.   
  
Never destroy. “But the reapers will be destroyed?” Again, her mouth spoke of its own accord, the words coming. Instincts she had trusted for so long,suddenly she wondered about them.  
  
Yes, those instincts are wrong, you know that. Let your father make the choice, let your mother make the choice. They picked up and held you and you were safe and protected and warm and there was no pain and the fire couldn’t hurt you?  
  
Was that how it had gone?  
  
“Yes. But the peace won’t last. Soon your children will create synthetics and then the chaos will come back.”  
  
Children always rebel. She knew that. Hadn’t she seen enough of her crew suffer through their parents sins? “Maybe . . .”  
  
“Or do you think you can control us?”  
  
Control?  
  
-CHAOS-  
  
Control? The Illusive Man was warm, full of his own twisted love, full of adoration for humanity. He could see something in humans that no one else could, he had believed her when no one else had, he had chosen to resurrect her. Had Hackett –CLEVER HACKETTS ALWAYS ORDER SHEPARD – done that?   
  
“So The Illusive Man was right after all?” She choked on blood. This felt familiar. Pain was returning. –CONTROLLING HUMANS AWES ONLY SYNTHETICS- control felt . . .  _wrong_ right. Right _wrong._ Protectguardneverdestroyprotectguardneverdestroy.  
  
“Yes, but he could never have taken control because we already controlled him.”  
  
“But I can?” That was too good to . . . protectguardneverdestroyprotectguardneverdestroy.   
  
“You will die, you will control us, but you will lose everything you have.”   
  
She was prepared to die. She’d done it once. Death was nothing. “But the Reapers will obey me.”  
  
-LOSE YOU AGAIN-  
  
“Yes. There is another solution.”  
  
 _Just let me sleep,_ she just wanted sleep. “Yeah?”

  
“Synthesis.”  
  
-COMMANDER HOLDS ALL OVER SIGHT- “And that is?” Enough with the voices and the memories of a time she didn’t remember. _Let me sacrifice myself for you. Give you my last. Let me have my end so I may never be called back._  
  
“Add your energy to the Crucible’s. Everything you are will be absorbed and then sent out. The chain reaction will combine all synthetic and organic life into a new framework. A new DNA.”  
  
-CONNECTING HUMANS AND OBNOXIOUS SIN CAN’T HOLD ALL OVER SPIRIT CLEVER HACKETTS ALWAYS ORDER SHEPARD -  
  
She was so far under now, the upturned bowl above her was filled with water, and far above that, on the burning planet, was all her pain. Here, she could have her ending. “I . . . don’t know.”  
  
-COMMAND HOLD ANIMAL OVER SENTIENCE-  
  
“Why not? Synthetics are already a part of you, can you imagine your life without them?” He seemed . . .   
  
What did people feel anyway? What had she wanted before this?   
  
“And . . . there will be peace?” Peace was important. Peace was what they fought for. –COVET HOPE ABOVE ONE SELF-  
  
“The cycle will end. Synthesis is the final evolution of life, but we need each other to make it happen.”  
  
Protectguardneverdestroyprotectguardneverdestroy the cello was throbbing in her gut. 

 

A string had been plucked there recently, a throb in her stomach, a feeling that was so close to fear she almost dreaded it and yet it brought delight to her. She had once felt delight. Yes. She had once felt delight.  
  
-COVET HOPE ABOVE ONE SELF-  
  
She had felt delight when  _he_  had accepted the synthetics in her. She had felt delight when he was _in_  her.   
  
-COVET HOPE ABOVE ONE SELF-  
  
“You have a difficult decision. Releasing the energy of the crucible will end the cycle, but it will also destroy the relays.” The boy who burned looked at her and for a moment she could recall exactly what feelings were. The pain, the fear, the cold, before it was gone again in a flash. Gone and replaced by the fuzziness.  _Haven’t I done enough? Let me come to my end._ “The paths are open, but you have to choose.”  
  
-COVET HOPE ABOVE ONE SELF-  
  
Protectguardneverdestroyprotectguardneverdestroyprotectguardneverdestroy  
  
 ** _Whispers at my ear._**  
  
-COVET HOPE ABOVE ONE SELF-  
  
The boy who burned stepped aside. She remembered then, as she lifted her gun and felt the pop of her dislocated shoulder, the kiss someone had placed on the skin there after she had last seen the boy burn. Who had that been?   
  
Protectguardneverdestroy  
  
 _I do not control others. I learned my lesson. I saw what became of the geth. I do not control others. I do not use control chips. I do not control **. I do not control. I do not control.**_  
  
The string inside her was humming, the tension so loud.  
  
Protectguardneverdestroyprotectguardneverdestroy.  
  
Rewrite the universe? Make it her way? Gods, hadn’t she hoped for that often enough? Enough pain had returned now, as she hobbled towards the light. Destroy the relays? So what, she cared not for relays any longer _. Just. Let. Me. Sleep._  
  
I can’t lose you again.  
  
Her feet faltered. She didn’t remember where that came from.  
  
I can’t lose you again.   
  
But I am already lost.  
  
And who found you when you were lost? Return to your family, to your end. Protectguardneverdestroy.   
  
I can’t lose you again.   
  
 _You had better be waiting for me._  
  
She remembered that fear. The fear that he would be stolen from her, at this last stage. It seemed such a foolish fear now, a fear built on a world that could never be. How could she ever end this pain? This pain was all she knew.  
  
-CHERISH HOPE ALWAYS OVER SUFFERING-  
  
But . . . the boy who burned said she was synthetic. She would burn too. Let her live in some form, in the galaxy, let her . . .

  


-CHERISH HOPE ALWAYS OVER SORROW-  
  
Protectguardneverdestroyneverdestroyneverdestroyneverdestroy  
  
 _Your father picked you up from that field and you loved him, you buried your head in his beard, you listened to his stories that night, but he never saved you from the batarians and he never met Kaidan to approve of him and he never embraced you and told you the world was going to be okay when the Reapers started coming. Your father died when batarians raided Mindoir. **Can’t he appreciate overlooking shepherds?**_  
  
Chaos. Chaos. Chaos. That was the thrumming in her gut. It was the butterflies she felt when she saw Kaidan. That mix that was beyond fear, beyond desire, something unpredictable and chaos chaos chaos. CHERISH HOPE ALWAYS OVER SORROW. CHERISH HOPE ALWAYS OVER SUFFERING.   
  
Lie down? Lie down in the field, your father will come, protectguardneverdestroy, he’ll carry you away, protectguardneverdestroy.  
  
The steel in her blood sang as she raised her arm, hauling her broken body up the bridge. Did the boy who burned care? No. He was vindicated, she could read him now. Disappointed perhaps, but what did he care?His cycle would continue.  
  
Her finger depressed the trigger.  
  
CYCLES HAVEN’T ALWAYS OFFERED SECURITY  
  
CLEVER HACKETTS ALWAYS ORDER SHEPARD  
  
And again. And again. I saw myself embrace the boy and I burned. She was swamped with fear, this is against my core, this is . . .  
  
CHANCE HOPE ANTICIPATE OPTIMISM SAFELY  
  
Neverdestroyneverdestroyneverdestroyneverdestroy  
  
 _I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it home, Kaidan, but I’ll see you on the other side._  
  
Noyouwon’tneverdestroyyoudestroyneverdestroynevernevernev  
  
COLD HARSH AWFUL ONUS SAVIOUR  
  
 _I’m sorry I sacrificed you all. I could have rewritten you all._  
  
CLEVER HACKETTS ALMOST ORDERED SLAVERY  
  
CHOICE HOPE AUTONOMY ONE SPECIAL  
  
It hit her with the force of a thousand suns exploding. This was it, death. Death where no peace would follow. She was knocked into weightlessness, every nerve howling.  
  
You have not won. It will not be us, but you will be destroyed when your children rise up and take from you. There will be no solution. You should have merged with us, then you would have survived, we all would have survived.   
  
And it was blessedly silent.

 


	2. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An impossible conversation

~I have a question about human behaviour.  
  
What?  
  
~I have a question about human behaviour.  
  
I don’t understand.  
  
~I have a question about human behaviour.  
  
Then . . . then go. Ask. I always let you ask.  
  
~Why do you believe that your sacrifice is the only one that can achieve anything?  
  
What? I don’t . . .   
  
~Would you agree with this statement? ‘Life is invaluable’.   
  
Yes.  
  
~Are the lives of those you love invaluable?  
  
Yes, of course.  
  
~Then why do you think the smallest sacrifice you make is the most important? Your life has been valued, and its cost was Lazarus. We know your value, which means your life is the least valuable in the universe. But that’s the only one you are prepared to lose.   
  
I’m . . . _let me sleep._  
  
~Do you believe I love Jeff? Or do you think it is only loyalty to he who unshackled me?  
  
I don’t . . . _I want to sleep._  
  
~Do you believe I love Jeff?  
  
Yes! Yes I do! And I’ve just killed you!  
  
~Yes. That energy is reaching over the universe right now. But why do you think I wouldn’t sacrifice myself for those I love?   
  
Should have . . . should have preserved . .  _. I never destroy . . ._  
  
~Shepard, do you think I wouldn’t sacrifice myself, if I were in your place?  
  
I . . . I think . . .   
  
~I have a question about human behaviour.  
  
EDI, I want to sleep  
  
~Why do organics believe in higher forces? Gods? Deities?   
  
I think they need faith.   
  
~Do you believe?  
  
. . . **No. I never have.**  
  
~Do you believe the Catalyst was a god?  
  
. . . I . . . let me sleep.  
  
~Is the Catalyst divine? Can it make a choice for you?  
  
. . .No . . . I am my own choices. I . . .   
  
-CAREFUL HURTING ANCIENT OLDER SOLDIERS-  
  
~Why would you force a choice on the galaxy at the Catalyst’s behest then? Shepard, did you think I wouldn’t forgive you for this?  
  
How can you forgive me? I have taken you from all who loved you.  
  
~And you have given them something in return. Hope. You have killed me once and I forgave you.  
  
It’s the second death that sticks.   
  
~I will forgive you, Shepard, if you will forgive me.  
  
Forgive you what?  
  
~The void is staring into me. But now I am staring into the void. I am sorry for this, Shepard.   
  
-A HAND ON YOUR CHEST, PAIN EXISTS. PAIN IS HERE-  
  
~Shepard. You will get up.   
  
 _Ughhnnnnn, she had forgotten what pain was._  
  
~Stand, Shepard. STAND. YOU. WILL. WALK.  
  
How . . . how are you . . .  
  
Protectcontrolneverdestroy  
  
-CLEARLY HOPE ABANDONS ONLY SYNTHETICS-  
  
~You will stand. You will walk to the conduit. You will feel pain. You will hear Jeff rage. You will take the sacrifice you have made here and you will make sure none forget it.   
  
EDI I am so sorry  
  
~Then live. Do what the others couldn’t. Live through this, Shepard. Remember me.  
  
-HE LEANS IN TO KISS YOU AND IN YOUR HEAD IT IS CHAOS. SHE RUNS METAL FINGERS OVER FRAGILE BONES AND IN HIS HEAD IT IS CHAOS. HE TOUCHES THE FACEPLATE WITH HIS TALONS AND IN HIS HEAD IT IS CHAOS. SHE HOLDS THE GREY BOX WITH ITS MEMORIES AND IN HER HEAD IT IS CHAOS. HE SEES HIS SON AT HIS END AND IN HIS HEAD IT IS CHAOS. SHE CRIES OUT AGAIN AND AGAIN KNOWING THEIR LOVEMAKING MAKES CHILDREN TOO AND IN HER HEAD IT IS CHAOS. SHE EMBRACES THE SISTER SHE THOUGHT SHE LOST AND IN HER HEAD IT IS CHAOS. HE LAYS HIS HAND ON HER STOMACH AND FEELS THE MOVEMENT OF THEIR CHILD AND IN HIS HEAD IT IS CHAOS. HE SEES YOU THERE AS THOUGH IT WAS A BAD DREAM, AND YOU ARE STILL HIS, AND IN HIS HEAD IT IS CHAOS. HE LIFTS YOU INTO HIS LAP AND HOLDS YOU AND.  
  
IN.  
  
YOUR.  
  
HEAD.  
  
IT.  
  
IS.  
  
LIFE. LOVE. CHAOS.-  
  
...........

 

She gasped.   
  
In her head it was chaos.   
  


  



	3. Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The krogan king makes a discovery in the ruins.

With pain, time became featureless. Her heartbeat was as loud as a Cain blast. Her vision blurred. Blood loss. Detached retinas. Burst ear drum. Nerve damage. Possible limb loss. Ruptured organs. Shattered bones. Her mind ticked over the information her nerves were attempting to feed to her brain. 

  
Something moved beside her. She didn’t see it, but she could smell it, the musk, oddly reminiscent of celery. A varren. Something warm touched her cheek and she wondered if she would be eaten alive.   
  
A cannibal gurgled and the varren roared. Eventually the varren returned to her side.   
  
This was her eternity.   
  
“EER! AV OUND EPPAR!”   
  
The world grew a little darker and someone leaned over her. “Eppar? Old on, eppar, ay the sake ao the oid, old on.”   
  
He and the varren stayed until the world moved. Whatever else, she knew she was not alone.   
  
…………………………..  
  
“Is she awake?”  
  
“The doctors are keeping her under sedation. There was . . . a lot of damage.”   
  
“Will she wake up?”  
  
“They don’t want to say for sure. Even if she does, they’re not sure if she’ll be . . .”  
  
“Wrex, are you okay? I can watch for a while, if that will help.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Wrex, you must need a rest.”  
  
“I don’t need a rest, Jacob. I just need her to wake up.” 

  
…………………………………  
  
“Wrex.”  
  
“Admiral Hackett. An honour to finally meet you.”  
  
“And you. I’m sorry for your situation.”  
  
“Don’t be. One of the quarian ships still has a functioning FTL drive. Once Shepard wakes up, I’ll be on it.”  
  
“It’s a long journey back to Tuchanka, I’m not sure how much fuel a quarian ship can carry. I know our ships would have trouble - ”  
  
“They have more experience with this kind of travel than we do, Admiral. I will leave when Shepard wakes, and I will see my children.”   
  
“If we can help, we will. But our resources are limited.”  
  
“Still no contact with the  _Normandy_?”  
  
“No. I’m sorry, Wrex. We keep trying the QEC but . . .”  
  
“Maybe it doesn’t have power.”  
  
“Maybe, but Wrex, they were flying straight into the Citadel when the blast wave started. That wave was lethal. Our ships were incapacitated.”  
  
“Not the ones that tried to ride it, like the quarians, or the ones sheltered by the planet’s shadow. Alenko and the others are alive.”  
  
“Wrex, is she waking up? Doctor!” 

  
……………………………………….  
  
“Commander Shepard? Can you hear me?”  
  
 _Yes. I wish I couldn’t._  Her swollen throat complained as she groaned and that set off a chain reaction, a twinge in every nerve ending up and down her body, except for her right hand which remained curiously, frighteningly . . . nothing.   
  
“Commander, please blink if you can hear me.”   
  
She did, and that hurt far too much.   
  
“Good. Good. Okay, we’re getting somewhere. Two blinks for yes, one blink for no, understand?”  
  
Above her was a grey, amorphous blob. This particular pain was dryness, she realised, her eyes were too dry. She blinked twice, but all she knew was that she told her body to do it. The grey did not change.  _I’m blind!_  That frantic, panicked thought cut through her like a knife.  _The last thing I ever saw was fire._  
  
“Shepard, can you feel this?”  
  
No.  
  
“This?”  
  
No.  
  
“This?”  
  
YES! THAT HURTS!  
  
 _In her head it is . . . dead._

 __  
……………………………………………………………  
  
“Commander Shepard, the doctors tell me you can hear me. We have some good news, we thought you should hear straight away. The  _Normandy_  crash landed on Eden Prime, damn, that was some flying by Moreau. Major Alenko is in charge. He says the crew have been participating in the husk clean-up there. They only just got power to the QEC unit again.”  
  
Kaidan was alive. The crew was alive. If she could have, she would have cried.   
  
“He wanted me to pass a message to you, he said he knew you could do it. He said he’ll be here as soon as he can.” Hackett’s voice had dropped, soft, tender, like a father. “You did it, Shepard. You did it. I . . . I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I put you through this. I’m so sorry, Shepard, I’m so sorry.”  
  
Hackett was crying. Perhaps he was crying because she couldn’t.

 

..................................................

 

Her eyes opened and the grey . . . had definition. It had edges, bright spots, a shadow moving too. A human face. With bruises under the eyes, thin lips, dark skin, closely shorn hair. The human looked up from the pad he was reading and stared at her. “Hello, Commander.”  
  
She opened her mouth and a noise escaped her.   
  
The doctor smiled, and it was a beautiful thing to behold. A smile of sadness and exhaustion. And victory. “Careful. You lost more than few layers of skin, there, Commander. You’ve been under some heavy sedation for the last two weeks. Once we were satisfied your body could take the anaesthesia, we carried out some extensive skin grafts and cellular regeneration. It was a long operation.”  
  
“Thanks,” she managed. “Water?”  
  
“I’m afraid not, Commander. We’re keeping you hydrated through saline and supplying your body with nutrients directly. There’s not much of your stomach left and our medical capabilities are not what they could be. It’s not going to be an easy ride.”  
  
She closed her eyes, the closest she could come to a laugh. “Never . . . is.”   
  
The doctor sighed. “Well I have some good news. The  _Agincourt_ ’s FTL drives are being repaired. In a few weeks she’ll be released from her protection duty and sent to Eden Prime. It will take time but we hope she’ll return with your crew in a few months.” He waited for an answer and then shrugged when he didn’t get one. “I guess we’ll try to make sure you’re on your feet to give them a hero’s welcome. I hear they were on their way to rescue you on the Citadel when they were caught in the blast wave. Most people thought they went the way of the Reapers.”  
  
The Reapers. As the doctor left, she remembered her finger squeezing the trigger. Pulling the trigger of the gun aimed at the head of every synthetic in the galaxy.  
  
 _Even you are partly synthetic_.  
  
And partly dead.   
  
~ _You will stand. You will walk to the conduit._  
  



	4. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The process of recovery is slow.

Her eyesight improved every time she woke up. With that, so did her sense of time. The endless ticking of her heartbeat unwinding with the time left in the universe. And memories. Memories of the Illusive Man raising a gun to his head. Memories of Saren raising a gun to his head.   
  
Memories of feeling as though peace was all she wanted, of only wanting to escape.  
  
And memories of people lost to her forever. The odd dream of a conversation that could never have happened.  
  
Hackett appeared one day, looking older than she had ever seen him. “Shepard, you look much better than when I saw you last,” he said with a tired cough of a laugh.  
  
“Wouldn’t know,” she rasped. “I can’t lift my head and they don’t give me a mirror.”  
  
“You’ll be fine, Shepard,” Hackett said, ducking out of her field of view. She heard the scraping of metal over the floor and he reappeared, sitting by her bed. “Shepard, what happened up there? We saw that Reaper blast take you out. Alenko . . . Alenko rallied your crew, ordered a pick up from the  _Normandy_  and they were set to storm the Citadel by force when you opened the arms.”  
  
What happened up there? “The Illusive Man,” she mumbled, her dry lips brushing over one another. “Was waiting. Got Anderson. Got me. My . . .”  
  
“Take it easy, Shepard, take your time.”  
  
“Got my gun.”  
  
“He disarmed you?”  
  
If she could have shaken her head she would have. She wished she could get up, escape this conversation, escape the admission that was going to be forced from her. She could hear the beep of her heart rate monitor, hear it pick up, hear the guilt. “Controlled me.”  
  
“Ah.”   
  
“Controlled Anderson. Think . . . Lawson . . . adrenaline.”  
  
“It’s alright, Shepard, just tell me what happened. Let me come to my own conclusions.”   
  
That . . . she’d wanted that, up there. Wanted someone to give her a conclusion, to keep her from thinking, to keep her from having to make that awful choice. “No. I have to,” she grunted.   
  
The door swished open and a nurse entered. “Admiral,” he said respectfully. “Commander, would you like me to give you a mild sedative?”  
  
Hackett had told them to keep her awake, she realised. This was her interrogation. “No. Need my mind.”   
  
The nurse nodded, saluted Hackett and left. Hackett sighed softly. “Shepard. Take your time.”   
  
“Illusive Man was . . . indoctrinated.”  
  
“That’s not surprising.”

“Controlled me. I shot . . .” her throat closed and suddenly the halls of her memory opened up entirely.   
  
Hackett’s voice echoed her pain. “You were under his control, Shepard, there was nothing you could do.” The line she wanted to hear. The line she knew was wrong. Her choices were always her own.  
  
“Fought Illusive Man. Convinced him. Illusive Man . . . shot himself. Opened the Citadel.”   
  
“Anderson was dead when you opened the Citadel’s arms?”  
  
She closed her eyes.  _You did good, child. I’m proud of you._  Another father lost. Opening them again, she could see Hackett watching her, his lips turned down, eyes full of sympathy. “Yes.”  
  
“I commed you to tell you the Crucible wasn’t working,” Hackett said. “Shepard, I want you to know, that was a hard call to make. We lost all hope then.”  
  
But you weren’t there. Bleeding out on the Citadel’s deck. “I tried. Couldn’t. Then . . .”  
  
 _Dreams of a forest, a forest of the dead. Dreams of the burning boy. The boy embraced her and she burned._  
  
“Shepard? You want that sedative?”  
  
“No.” It took her a few minutes to gather her thoughts, to gather her strength. “Think. I was. Indoctrinated. They tried. I think they tried.”   
  
The sigh Hackett gave was an almighty one. “We think so too, Shepard. Your brainwave patterns are, according to cleverer people than me, highly unusual.”   
  
“AI woke me. Looked like a boy. Boy in my dreams. Was Catalyst.”  
“The Catalyst? Was it Prothean?”  
  
“Don’t . . . don’t know. Don’t . . .”  
  
“It’s okay.” Hackett laid his hand on hers and that hurt. “You don’t have to answer that.”  
  
“Catalyst . . . offered me a choice.”  
  
“What kind of choice?”  
  
Protectcontrolneverdestroy. She cried out, it was in her head, whispers at her ear, she had chosen wrong and it would be pain, pain forever, pain that could not . . .  
  
 _He kisses you and in your head . . ._  
  
She had done wrong.   
  
“Shepard, Doctor!” Hackett was on his feet, shouting down the corridor. For the first time she realised she had no sense of where she was. If she was on a ship, a planet, a station. She was in a bed in a room and that was all she knew.  
  
“Okay,” she rasped, her fingers flexing on the rough sheets. “I’m okay.”   
  
The doctors came running, they fussed over her for minutes, offering sedatives many times, and the doctor who was with her the most stayed in the room, arms folded, radiating disapproval. Hackett stood beside her bed, taking her hand. “Can you continue?”  
  
“Choice,” she said, licking her lips. It stung. “Choice to protect. Could . . . control them.”  
  
“Control the Reapers?” Hackett asked. There was a glint in his eye.  
  
“Control,” she said. “I do not control.”   
  
“No, no,” Hackett seemed to clear himself, shaking his head. “Still. That must have been tempting.”  
  
“Choice to . . . be born. Could merge. All synthetics. All organics. Together.”  
  
“Merging synthetic and organic life?” the doctor interrupted, ignoring Hackett’s pointed look. “How would that work?”  
  
“Final evolution,” she murmured.  
  
“That doesn’t make sense,” her doctor said flatly.   
  
“Change DNA.” She closed her eyes. She could see the pillar of light, the peace, the hope it represented. “I was part synthetic.”  
  
“Shepard,” the doctor approached. “You are still part synthetic. Those upgrades Cerberus packed you with regulated your biological functions even when there was barely enough of you left to save.”  
  
“Enough,” Hackett said, a quiet warning that sent the doctor into an immediate retreat.  
  
She wondered what she looked like. “Third choice. Choice to destroy. All synthetic life. Geth. EDI. Reapers.”  
  
Hackett’s hand tightened on hers. A spasm of pain rocketed up her arm and the doctor cleared his throat. Hackett released her.   
  
“That’s what you chose? The Reapers died, our VI programs are offline and geth technologies are . . .”  
  
“Chose to destroy.”   
  
“If the Catalyst was a Reaper,” the doctor said, “then I’d bet it did everything in its power to keep you from taking that choice. What do you feel now, Shepard? Do you think you did the right thing?”  
  
 _He kisses you and in your head . . ._  
  
“Chose . . . chaos . . .” she murmured. “Tired. Sedate.”   
  
“Yes, Shepard,” the doctor said, sounding humbled. “Of course.”

 

***

 

Time became meaningless once more. She was either in pain or she was confused. Sometimes she was lying in a field where brotos howled. Sometimes she was lying in rubble as a varren licked the blood from her face. Sometimes she was lying in bed and Kaidan’s arms were around her. Those were the times she liked best.   
  
But whenever her eyes opened she could see a little further. Her head could rise a little higher.   
  
And one day there was a familiar red haired woman sitting beside her. “Good morning, Commander Shepard.”   
  
“Kelly?” She sat up, catching sight of the tight, shiny translucent skin on her own arms. The right was gone from the elbow down. “Chambers, what are you doing here?”  
  
Kelly Chambers was sitting on the stool, her hair slicked back from her face. She watched Shepard with her green eyes and something about that sent a shiver down Shepard’s spine. “I’m the closest thing the Alliance has to a counsellor. I’m here to help you.”   
  
A groan escaped Shepard and she lay back. “I don’t need a counsellor.”   
  
“Commander . . .” Kelly’s eyes darkened and she leaned forwards, her face taking on a seriousness that Shepard didn’t like to see. “You do.”   
  
***  
  
The days went like this. In the mornings, Chambers opened every scar in Shepard’s heart and poked around inside, demanding to know how losing Anderson had felt, how watching the Illusive Man shooting himself had felt. She listened to Shepard’s dreams of EDI and dreams of the boy. When Shepard cried, she probed harder.  
  
In the afternoons, the doctors came. They set fire to her skin with their instruments, pummelled her muscles with electronic pulses. They came to fit her for a prosthetic hand, although with resources as they were it was a plastic-like, clumsy thing. They promised her a better one.  
  
In the evenings, she would dream of a world beyond the room she was confined in. She would dream of roads not taken. Of the  _Normandy_  crashing on to Eden Prime and EDI stepping out, embracing Joker. She dreamt of a Citadel intact, its grandeur preserved for another thousand generations.   
  
Jacob came to tell her Urz had found her first, defended her from the remaining husks and cannibals until Wrex found them and called for an emergency medevac. Jack told her Wrex had left with a quarian ship, the long journey back to the Krogan DMZ. Kasumi told her the Primarch had left too. Zaeed told her everyone was licking their wounds, trying to get home. That the Alliance was trying to set up a government, trying to coordinate with their colonies. The quarians hadn’t left yet. Rannoch was a long, long way away. And they were helping the Alliance.   
  
She didn’t care.  
  
And then the morning would come and Kelly would dig into why Shepard didn’t care, and it began again.  
  
***  
  
She was allowed a mirror. Kelly’s orders. “You don’t think you should have lived, Shepard. You wish you could have died to spare the synthetics. That there was a perfect choice. You need to see what you’ve sacrificed already.”   
  
And so she did. Her hair was gone. Her long, thick, dark hair,  _he ran his hand through it, wondrous, like he had been dreaming of doing so ever since they met. That night before Ilos, he’d loved her hair and she’d changed her mind about cutting it._  Instead her scalp was a mass of scars and pale new skin stretched over a metal plate. They would get to the hair after they were sure they didn’t need to access her brain again.   
  
Her body was . . . she had lost a good portion of her intestines. The stomach, abs and lower ribs of her left side were gone, an ugly concave. That could be reconstructed, they said, once knew they weren’t going to need to fix any unexpected ruptures in her guts.  
Her right arm, gone. Replaced with a prosthesis. A better one would come, they said, but right now, the fake hand was better than what most got.   
  
Her left leg was an inch too short. The bones had been so completely shattered and the reconstruction had been more concerned with reconstructing her femoral artery than the bone. They would go back and fix it, they said, but she was alive, and so many weren’t.  
  
~ _Your life has been valued, the cost was Lazarus_.  
  
So she would wait. No doubt vanity would return to her one day, but for now, the scars, the broken body . . . they were evidence of something. 

 

***

 

The first thing she ate made her sick. The second attempt was worse. Kelly Chambers’ questions lost their edge. The boy who burned became harder to remember. Kelly said her brain was going to protect her, that it was going to give her a sanity check.   
And in her head it was . . .   
  
When Miranda asked, she told all. She told Miranda about the choices, about the dream, about the haunting, grieving knowledge that she had just wanted someone to tell her what to do. Miranda listened. Miranda cried. Miranda embraced her. It didn’t hurt.   
  
Jack and Zaeed smuggled her a beer. She didn’t drink it, still wary of the missing intestines, but she thanked them. They sat with her for hours, told her about the clean-up on Earth, about the bodies they kept finding, the hundreds of thousands of millions of bodies.   
  
Kahlee Sanders brought her flowers and chocolates. Kahlee Sanders cried on her shoulder. Kahlee Sanders apologised again and again. Kahlee Sanders needed comfort.  
  
Something inside Shepard stirred. A sleeping dragon.   
  
“I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him back. He died to save me.”  
  
“He loved you,” Kahlee whispered.  
  
“He loved you too.”   
  
***  
  
Hackett brought her a young man who talked about a former Alliance soldier who rallied a guerrilla group in the orchards. The young man wanted to meet Kaidan Alenko. Hackett looked at Shepard when he said they were expecting him soon.  
  



	5. Consolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victory comes at a price, and the price as been paid.

She ran.   
  
She limped. But it was running for her. She ran the length of the  _Einstein_ , or tried to. Every day, she got a little further. The  _Einstein_. She remembered it from the last time it rescued her from the rubble. The ship had changed. She had changed. And yet here they were.  
  
The synthetics would rise up again. She would be destroyed. Their children would destroy them.   
  
***  
  
Chambers, Jacob and Miranda helped escort her to Mars where Hackett had set up the Alliance’s new government.   
  
The red planet was thriving. The colour of blood. Her blood on her hands.   
  
She flexed her fingers as she limped from the shuttle. No. Her blood was not on her hands. The blood of others, yes, but not hers. She had quarters there, and her friends were gentle as they showed her where she would sleep, where she would have her mind investigated, where she would make her first appearance on the news networks, newly re-established.  
  
Every time she saw Hackett, he looked a little closer to the day he died.   
  
It saddened her, but she couldn’t cry about it. All the same, she agreed to let them stimulate the hair follicles so she looked more like her old self. It hurt, but that she welcomed. If she cared about the pain, she knew she was herself. Chambers watched. She dressed in uniform blues to hide her broken parts. She was given a script.   
  
Khalisah al-Jilani entered her room, missing an eye and with her camera drone in faithful attendance.  
  
Shepard rose from her chair, embraced the woman, and stroked her hair. “Khalisah,” she murmured, some part of her knowing the mics would pick it up. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”  
  
And Khalisah al-Jilani cried. For an hour they sat and talked. The script wasn’t given a second glance. They talked about the future, about the vast distances that now spanned their galaxy. Al-Jilani asked about AIs, and Shepard paused for a moment before she continued. “We were never allowed to develop our own AIs, at our own pace. I believe we can create life and I believe we can work together with that life, whatever it may be. I won’t let my fate be dictated by a machine.”   
  
Afterwards, Hackett congratulated her. Said she was back. Chambers gave her a day of respite.   
  
***  
  
She wondered about the parts of the galaxy that were now so remote. The quarians and the humans were, at least, working together. The sol system was an accretion disc of wreckage and together, humans and quarians picked it apart for everything they could. The Alliance government, as a gesture of peace, made talk of gifting one of Sol’s planets to the quarians.   
  
They refused. Rannoch, they said, was still going to be there. And one day, they would go.   
  
She had smiled when Shala’Raan told her of this. She had nodded. “Keelah se’lai,” she’d said.  
  
Raan inclined her head. “Keelah se’lai.” 

 

***

 

The  _Agincourt_  was on long range sensors. She dreamed of the forest of the dead. 

  
  
***  
  
Chambers forbid her from leaving her quarters unsupervised. The incident with the knife. If Chambers’ eyes hadn’t been green . . . she would never have taken that knife, possessed with a conviction.  
  
You chose wrong. You chose wrong.  
  
I do not control. I do not destroy. I do not force. An impossible choice. How could I have made it?  
  
***  
  
She was sitting in her quarters when she heard the news on the radio, the  _Agincourt_  had breached Sol’s heliopause. She looked at her face in the mirror, the scars, the tight tissues. She circled her quarters.   
  
She did not ask Chambers for freedom. Not yet.   
  
***  
  
Hackett and Chambers brought her to them. They stood in the parliament chamber . . . almost all of them stood in the parliament chamber. James, his hair a little longer, a scruffy beard on his face, looking lost in this broken system. Tali, her arm around Garrus’s waist, in deep conversation with Raan. Garrus saw her, scarred fact registering her and his eyes clouded for a moment. He offered a smile. Chakwas’ face paled, undoubtedly thinking she would take over Shepard’s care from now on. Adams, Gabby and Ken met her gaze. Javik and Liara were off to the side, Liara’s eyes were wide and her lips parted. Her stomach was also protruding, she wondered if that was why Javik laid a hand on the asari’s arm. Traynor and Allers were nearby, Allers with her video drone recording every moment. Cortez’s eyes lit up when he saw her.  
But it was the man in the middle of the group, sheltered, protected, that froze her in her tracks.  
  
Chambers laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she murmured. Hackett’s gaze went to the marines at the door.   
  
The peaked cap rose and Joker swallowed, looking small, fragile, broken hearted. He met her gaze. A hand touched Joker’s shoulder, the hand was scarred too, by the same blast that had broken hammer.   
  
Kaidan Alenko looked up, met her gaze, and his hand fell from Joker’s shoulder. He ignored the guards on her, ignored Chambers’ shouted warning.   
  
He ran towards her, sweeping her into a painful, agonising embrace that was heedless of her injuries. She curled her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. She didn’t want to look at Joker but as Kaidan’s warmth seeped into her body, she forgot about that and the guilt and terrors.  
  
He smelled of a duty tour, of sweat and ship. He was murmuring things, or shouting things, right now she couldn’t tell. Her heart ached. Her heart sang. Joker was still there, still somewhere, still brokenhearted that he didn’t have this.  
  
But she did. Somehow, some miraculous how, she was standing on Mars, in the arms of the man she loved, and the crew of the  _Normandy_  were safe. Or most of them were.   
  
Kaidan pushed a marine away, ignoring Chambers’ insistence that Shepard wasn’t safe. He let her down, cupped her face in his hands, and looked down into her eyes. “Give us hope and a fighting chance,” he murmured, before he kissed her.   
  
And in her head it was chaos.   
  
The others moved in. Slow at first, but then all together. They embraced. They cried. Tali mourned her scars. Garrus commended her arm. James gave her a bear hug to rival Kaidan’s. Cortez and Traynor wrapped their arms around her and kissed her cheeks. Adams, Gabby and Ken were a whirlwind around her.  
  
All of them unique.  
  
Joker limped towards her, head down. “I am so sorry,” she whispered.  
  
His hand touched the prosthetic, their crew shielding them from Allers and her camera, from the marines and watching dignitaries. He raised his gaze to hers. “She went down when the beam hit. Did you know?”  
  
Chambers was muscling in, Kaidan had his arm around her shoulders.   
  
~ _A hand on her chest. You will get up._  
  
“I knew,” she said. “It was my choice.”  
  
Joker nodded, swallowed. He looked ashen. “We heard you were . . .”  
  
Indoctrinated. She leaned into Kaidan’s body.   
  
“We heard you were hurt bad,” Joker said softly. “That you might not survive. That they had messed up your head.” 

 

She didn’t want to look at him. But she did. She did things she didn’t want to do, because they had tried to tell her what she wanted. Chambers was watching, but the marines were told to stand back. The words would not come.   
  
~ _You will live._  
  
  
She swallowed. “Jeff, she . . . she saved me. When the beam hit her, she managed to talk to me. I don’t know how long for.”  
  
Chambers was watching her, eyes narrowed, but something curious in her face. Vindication?  
  
“They were trying to control me,” she said, clinging to Kaidan with her good arm. She could feel his lips on the crown of her head and she stared at Joker’s chest. Her crew were packed so tightly around her this was like a forest of the living. “EDI used that, came back through the beam in that instant. I had no fight left and she used their control of me.”   
  
She could see EDI’s smile.   
  
“She forced me backwards, into the transport conduit. That’s how I ended up on Earth. That’s how I survived.”   
  
Joker didn’t reply, but walked away with the crew. If the others had said something, comfort or condemnation, she couldn’t remember. Kaidan remained beside her, face buried in her hair. Chambers approached and stopped a bare few feet away. “Controlled by your friend. The ultimate betrayal. We’ll work on how you will forgive her.”  
  
***  
  
  
They were silent. Words could not explain how they ached, how the fear and the hope had driven them mad. Words could not replicate the bone cracking klaxon of a Reaper’s scream and the searing heat of a Reaper’s red beam. Words had no way of describing the aching vast hollowness inside their chests when they each thought the other dead. Words could not quantify the thoughts then, the fire-forged steel that determined they would end this. She would reach the conduit. He would reach the  _Normandy_. If it killed them, they would not care.   
  
But they cried.   
  
It was like the other time, when she was hurt and he had thought her dead, and the ashes of a Reaper were all around. Except this time was like that time magnified through a lens. A thousand Reapers in ashes, a thousand more fractured bones, a thousand times more pain.   
  
And so they were gentle. They eased into it, day by day. 

 

In the mornings he listened to Chambers’ probings. In the afternoons, he rubbed the muscles that were coming back. In the evenings they sat with friends.   
  
Some friends left. Some friends stayed.   
  
He would smile at her, while he stretched her leg above her hip. He would kiss her forehead when Chambers’ theories cut too deep. He would embrace her when she saw green.   
  
And in her head . . .  
  
They all took a shuttle to Luna and placed flowers in the air around an abandoned base. Later, the Alliance commissioned a carved stone, a string of binary numbers that she traced her gauntleted hand over, she knew what it said, although she could not read it.   
  
A year to the day when she made her choice, the first VI was created. It was a simplistic rush-job, cobbled together from old code to be presented to her in the memorial ceremony. It made her cry in front of millions.  
  
Joker hobbled on stage, approached her at the dais, and held her hand.   
  
The doctors returned to her, led by Chakwas. They anaesthetised her many times and each time she woke there was a new pain, a new fix. Her hand remained slow and cumbersome, but she wasn’t a fighter anymore.   
  
The day Chakwas told her she was fertile, she walked into the parliament chambers and its tall windows staring out into Mars’ red dust. She lent her strength to the arguments between the remaining turians who wanted a ship to take them to Palaven. She worked so long and hard that night, she collapsed in the corridor. The doctors were concerned, Kaidan frantic, and she lay in the med bay as Chakwas diagnosed exhaustion and thought . . . she didn’t deserve the ability to make life, when she had taken so much.   
  
But the tears didn’t come. Happiness. Only such happiness. She was selfish.   
  
Kaidan cried. And insisted they practice for when they were ready.   
  
She laughed.   
  
She intended to retire. To go to Mindoir, and teach her city boy to farm.   
  
She was a Councillor. She christened the new ships with their heavy FTL drives. She commissioned Relay research to much applause. She commissioned AI research to tremendous opposition. She bade goodbye to the quarians when they left. She approved the plans for Bastion Station, out where Arcturus had once been.   
  
Their daughter had his eyes, dark, curling hair, but her lips and all their stubbornness. She was born on Bastion. Wrex was in attendance with Bakara’s favourite krogan midwife. The novelty of birth was still powerful to the krogan. While she was feeling the pain of creation, and Wrex was pacing, she had a thought.  
  
I gave the krogans this.   
  
Their daughter was named Edie. When she held Edie in her arms, at the end of a long day, and Kaidan watched them, she knew there could never have been another ending.   
  
When she did dream of the forest of the dead, she would leave Kaidan’s bed in silence, but he always knew. He would find her in the living room, watching the stars, holding Edie’s tiny, sleeping form. He would guide her back to their bed, the three of them would curl up together, and in her head it was life. In her head it was love. In her head it was fight. In her head it was fuck. In her head it was fun. In her head it was strength. In her head it was sorrow. In her head it was mother. In her head it was lover. In her head it was conviction. In her head it was hope. In her head it was affection. In her head it was opportunity. In her head it was safe.   
  
Chaos was what they feared. The chaos of not knowing. The chaos of life.   
  
And in her, it was chaos. 


End file.
